Child obesity blamed on legislators, food marketing, parents

It's the revelation that hits Selfa Saucedo hard in an obesity crisis that means, according to one study, about half of the children in some Ventura County communities are overweight or obese.

"If we don't do anything, we will outlive our children," said Saucedo, staff services manager for the Ventura County Public Health Department, adding that the blame doesn't belong to the youths.

"We are the ones doing this. We are the adults, the grown-ups," Saucedo said.

On Thursday, the department and the A Lean VC coalition screened an episode on childhood obesity from the HBO documentary "The Weight of the Nation." Educators, public-health workers, after-school program leaders and others watched in an Oxnard conference room as the documentary showed a world where children crave Big Macs instead of broccoli.

They were told:

• Children with TVs in their bedrooms are more prone to obesity not just because of inactivity but also due to the number of commercials for cereals, energy drinks and fast food.

• Battles were waged in Congress to keep labeling as a vegetable the tomato paste on pizza used in school cafeterias.

• One of three children born in 2000 will develop diabetes.

• One out of five children drink enough soda, juice and other sweetened drinks to account for an extra meal a day every day.

"I was struck that there are 25 teaspoons of sugar in a Frappuccino," said Carl Lodico of Pacific Camps Family Resources, an after-school program with sites across Ventura County. "What it made me think is how easy it is to get fat without really knowing. It's beyond comprehension that people are eating that much sugar."

In Ventura County, 35.9 percent of children were overweight or obese in 2010, according to a study released in June that looked at state-mandated fitness assessments done in the fifth, seventh and ninth grades. Of the assessed children who attend school in Oxnard, 47.9 percent weighed too much, said the study from UCLA and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy. Children in Santa Paula schools registered the same figure.

The number was even higher in Port Hueneme, at nearly 53 percent, but a city official who challenged the study said school districts overlap the city's boundaries. That means Port Hueneme's data was culled not from seventh- and ninth-graders, but only 429 fifth-graders from four elementary schools.

In an Oxnard conference room filled with people already involved in the battle against obesity, some of the blame for a national crisis was placed with legislators. Making change is hard, said Vanessa Hernandez, citing battles to mandate vending machines that dispense healthful foods.

"Many people thought you were stepping on their civil liberties," said Hernandez of the Ventura County Medical Resources Foundation and a former district representative for Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara.

She remembers the arguments used against Capps and others who supported healthful foods, phrases like "It's their choice," and, "It's not the government's job to tell people what they should be eating."

Others pointed fingers at a food industry that bombards children with ads for unhealthful foods. Blame also was put on parents who don't keep themselves healthy, much less their children.

"I think we all need to be role models," said Alice Sweet, a social worker with California Children's Services.

The people fighting obesity also talked about ongoing projects including salad bars in schools, walking clubs, county efforts to transform communities and programs like A Lean VC that bring schools, businesses and health care providers together.

The efforts are making a difference, they said.

"I think it's bad, but we can fix it," Saucedo said.

She cited other health battles waged against powerful entities that once seemed insurmountable.

"You know what gives me hope? The tobacco industry and what happened to tobacco," she said.